Gunshot victim Tony Banks is learning to forge ahead.
Tony Banks noticed the car coming to a stop in front of his girlfriend’s home on Detroit’s West Side. The driver called out, and the 18-year-old replied, “Yeah, what you want?”
“I want you,” said the driver as he opened the door, revealing a handgun.
Banks turned around and took off running when the first shot hit him in the lower back. Two other rounds whizzed over his head as he fell to the hot summer pavement.
The bullet knocked the wind out of Banks–who was quickly bathed in blood– so all he could do was mouth the words, “Help me.” A neighbor woman came across the street and placed ice on the open wound.
Within minutes, a Detroit police squad car arrived and the officers lifted Banks into the back seat and sped off to Grace Hospital. Once there, Banks could hear the doctors discount his chances for survival as he struggled to stay awake. He was afraid that if he closed his eyes they would remain shut forever.
But the struggle for consciousness was too great. Banks told Jesus his life was in his hands and closed his eyes.
Seven years later, Banks–now 25 and paralyzed with minimal use of one hand and leg–draws odd looks when he tells people, “Getting shot was one of the best things to happen to me.”
“They look at me like, `What are you talking about?’ ” he says. “But I know I’ve got another chance now.”
Banks didn’t do much with his first chance at life.
He moved out of his home at age 13 to live with the family of his 12-year-old girlfriend. He dropped out of Redford High School in the 10th grade and began dealing drugs. He fathered two children while still in his teens.
He was arrested three times for dealing drugs before a year-old feud ended with the gunshot that put him in a wheelchair for life.
“If I hadn’t been shot, I’d probably be dead,” he says from his apartment in the Millender Center. “I would have been lured back to the same life. But everything happens for a reason.
Banks says he wants his second chance at life to be spent counseling youngsters who find it difficult to stay on the righteous path. His wheelchair is his “ultimate weapon” to show how he is “paying for my decision making.”
“I don’t want this to be in vain,” Banks says.
But before he could tell others how they should live their lives, Banks had to start living his new one. He fills his days with a devotion to composing gospel rap music and working toward his high school diploma.
That leaves little time to spend wondering, “Why me?” He says he can count on one hand the number of down days he has had in seven years.
“I think I handle it better than the average guy,” Banks says.
His reasoning for his disposition is simple.
“Even though it was a bad situation, I had to be more thankful that I was alive,” he says.
Coping with his new life took time, Banks admits. The smallest chores, from brushing his hair to going on errands, requires help. His privacy is gone as is the ability to “do what I want when I want with who I want.”
“You need to have support for everything,” he says. “You learn quickly not to be afraid to ask for it.”
Banks says he had always been a religious person but chose in his younger years to turn his back on his faith. He says his paralysis was a “big reminder” that there was another direction to go.
“The Lord was telling me, `You tried the other way, now try this way,’ ” he says.
Banks has decided to dedicate his life to using inspirational talks and gospel rap to preach to kids to stay in school and away from drugs. Banks’ cousin, Robert Banks, and some friends come to his apartment to hang out and write gospel rap music.
He has spoken to area youth groups and often draws a crowd after church to hear him rap. He hopes that his gospel rap group, Masterpeace, will one day release a CD. Banks has a title–“Still Living.”
Banks pops a cassette in a portable stereo and plays one of the songs he has recorded, “The Devil Is a Lie.” One of Banks’s rap lines says, “Because of this disability, I can’t work and it hurts,” but adds that his “spirit can walk.”
“I want to be an inspiration to young and old worldwide,” Banks says. “Kids are drawn to me, partly because of the wheelchair. I want to tell them about everyday decisions and that you suffer the consequences of those decisions.”
Banks considers this his job for the rest of his life, something he feels was planned for him by God.
“If I can help anybody, that’s what I want to do,” he says.
